Mall of America

Asante wasted little time fighting through the wave of hysteria. It was ridiculous. This was why he never stuck around afterwards to watch. There were some he had worked with in the past who enjoyed this chaos—the smell of fear, the clawing and clamoring to survive, the screams and cries of human nature at its most vulnerable. Or, as Asante considered it, human nature at its most pathetic. And from simply a glance, he knew that to be true.

Years ago he learned never to be fooled. Those who bragged that a crisis brought out the best in people would soon have you forget that the exact same crisis would also bring out the very worst in people. Asante stood at the top of the escalator looking down as the wildfire of panic raced through each floor of the mall and he resisted the urge to smile. People shoved each other, stepping over the injured, dropping and leaving behind their precious belongings. If they thought this was bad, wait until they saw what was to come. This was but a distraction.

He followed the GPS signal as he shoved through, keeping close to the walls where he knew any cameras still functioning could not pick up his image as easily. He walked quickly when he wanted to run. Time was slipping by. It had taken him longer than he expected to fight his way through the crowds amassing at the exits. The signal seemed to be taking him right back to where the carriers began—in the food court.

Asante stopped suddenly. He dropped down to the floor, kneeled and doubled over his duffel bag, pretending to be hurt while a security guard ran by. He didn’t want security seeing his PARAMEDIC cap and escorting him through to the wounded. He’d find his own wounded.

While on the floor he turned on his wireless headset that fit close and tight over his left ear. He had strapped the small computer, just a fraction bigger than a smartphone, to the inside of his arm so he had both hands free and could still follow the green blinks on the computer screen’s map. He poked in a number on the keypad and then turned up the volume on his headset. In seconds he was listening in on the mall’s security guards exchange information and curses.

“Where are the cops?”

“On their way.”

“How frickin’ long does it take?”

This time Asante couldn’t help but smile. Their wait was his gain. And now they would warn him when it was time for him to leave.

The food court reminded him of a sidewalk café in Tel Aviv after it had been bombed. It had been in his student days when he was still studying the art of terror. Where better to learn than on the eternal battlefield. Now he looked around at tables and chairs that were strewn and broken like piles of pickup sticks. The walls were splattered with a combination of Chinese dumplings, pizza, coffee, flesh and blood. The floors glittered with glass. The mist from the ceiling sprinklers added to the haze, dampening those who ran away and soaking those who couldn’t.

Asante followed the green blinking light on his GPS system, tapping it twice when it malfunctioned and indicated that his target was right in front of him. He pressed several buttons before he realized the computer had not malfunctioned at all. Where he expected to see the young Dixon Lee, he saw instead a young woman. She was curled up behind an overturned table, close to the rail that over-looked the mall’s atrium.

She was no longer moving, but she was, indeed, the source of the blinking green light.

Son of a bitch.

This was his errant carrier?